Editing Distribution (mathematics) (section)

==History==

The practical use of distributions can be traced back to the use of [[Green's function|Green's functions]] in the 1830s to solve ordinary differential equations, but was not formalized until much later. According to {{harvtxt|Kolmogorov|Fomin|1957}}, generalized functions originated in the work of {{harvs|txt|author-link=Sergei Lvovich Sobolev|first=Sergei|last= Sobolev|year=1936}} on [[second-order differential equation|second-order]] [[hyperbolic partial differential equation]]s, and the ideas were developed in somewhat extended form by [[Laurent Schwartz]] in the late 1940s. According to his autobiography, Schwartz introduced the term "distribution" by analogy with a distribution of electrical charge, possibly including not only point charges but also dipoles and so on. {{harvtxt|Gårding|1997}} comments that although the ideas in the transformative book by {{harvtxt|Schwartz|1951}} were not entirely new, it was Schwartz's broad attack and conviction that distributions would be useful almost everywhere in analysis that made the difference. A detailed history of the theory of distributions was given by {{harvtxt|Lützen|1982}}.